Wednesday 25 January 2017

Monte Carlo Part 2

The next step for my monte carlo POC was to integrate some course data into it.
Sample excel file here:
Link
The first worksheet is the same as before, and the third is a reference file for strokes gained data.

The middle worksheet will allow you to enter course data and then using the simulated data test the safety of your strategy. Columns requiring input are green. Calculated outputs are yellow. To test it out you will need to get some metrics from a course planner or Google Earth.

Hole - Self explanatory.
Start Yardage - Self explanatory.
Safe Width Yards - Using your mean distance data from the dispersion sheet use google earth to measure the safe width at this point from the tee.
Club - Self explanatory.

From this data it will calculate the number of shots predicted to be unsafe to the left and right followed by the number predicted to be safe. If your aim is to be safe on >17/18 holes you will need to aim for >95% safety. In practise I have accepted 84% for hole 1 because in real life it is a par 5 and unsafe rarely means a situation where the ball cannot be advanced far enough to reach the green in 3. Conversely, hitting driver means I can easily reach the green (at least in distance terms) >80% of the time.

In the example data based on my distance and dispersion 2H on hole 1 will be safe 99.9% of the time vs 83.7% for driver. However, my SG would be -0.05 with 2H vs 0.21 with driver.

For hole 3 in the example data 2H makes sense. The safe zone narrows significantly with increasing distance leading to a high percentage of unsafe driver shots (approx 34%) vs a high safety margin with 2H (approx 98% safe).

This model is highly limited but last year I was struggling with my strategy on a number of tee shots. Using this data I realised I was hitting driver when I shouldn't and the result was lots of unsafe shots with little to be gained by hitting it further. Switching to the optimal club (I enhanced the spreadsheet to allow for 5 clubs off the tee (model the data, copy the rows) reduced my average score on 1 particular hole by 0.4 shots!


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